Environmental and Technical Criterion for Wind Power Plant Site Selection in Iran

Planning applications for environmentally sensitive developments must be accompanied by an Environmental Statement (ES) which addresses public concerns over the likely impacts on the landscape. As international and national rules,the effects on the environment in all industrial development projects in all countries are required. This study is going to develop the selection criteria which are effective on wind power plant site locating as environmental and technical point of view. This paper describes a project which was undertaken to perform the spatial analysis required for an EIA of a proposed wind farm. The system, developed within ArcMap, integrates a variety of data sets (including digital environmental, Technical and geograpical) to quantify and qualify these environmental impacts. This paper also describes how the system was extended to consider site selection criteria to determine the optimal locations for wind farms in Iran.